Hi! I’m Kate.
Why is sleep so important to me? Because I need 8 hours of it to function! When I had my daughter, I was shocked at how well I functioned on very little sleep. Ask my husband…I am not a morning person, and I am a bear when I am running on a less-than-adequate amount of sleep. I was in “new mommy stupor” and it was an intoxicating endorphin high! I was conquering the world whilst sleeping in 2 hour stretches! I was SUPERWOMAN!
And then, I wasn’t.
When my daughter was about 4 months old, that dreaded sleep regression hit. For a few weeks, she had been only waking up once or twice a night, and I thought we were on track to get her sleeping through the night soon. WRONG! She took that regression and ran with it. Ran far. She was not playing. She decided waking up every hour and a half was amazing, and she was going to continue it well past the allotted regression time.
This is when I discovered I was human and my new mommy high ran out. A 13-lb human was my kryptonite.
I was so tired, I wanted to cry. And I did cry. And she cried. It was waterworks…all the time. She was hungry; she was overtired. I was hungry; I was overtired. We both needed her to sleep.
I have always believed in sleep training and sleep schedules and routines, so I knew it was time. I knew she weighed enough, was old enough and was capable of sleeping through the night! It is so much easier to reason these things when you are sitting there debating them with your husband as opposed to actually making it happen.
But we did it. We sleep trained her. And as we watched her on the monitor, teaching herself to self-soothe and sleep, my Superwoman Complex came back in the form of the need to rescue her. Rescue her from what? Learning a very important life skill and some independence? I had to remind myself that, not only do I want to be Superwoman for my family, I want to RAISE Superwoman!
My daughter sleeps like a rock star these days and because of that, I get to go back to pretending I am Superwoman. Scaling and conquering mountains of laundry and checking off my to-do list with one hand cutting up fruit and the other helping with a puzzle.
It is important we get past the feelings of not being enough, not doing enough. Superwoman is an alter ego that you define for yourself. It might mean showering and washing your hair that day. It might mean making a full dinner AND putting on real pants. Take your super powers as far as they will let you go that day, but also give yourself grace and remember, even superheroes need sleep!
Sweet Dreams,
Kate Mansukhani
The Cradle Coach, Southern California Sleep Consultant
